Explanation on how to search the archives
I have heard two suggestions on how to search the achives one is: If you have time to post and discuss an idea, you have time to search gmane.comp.python.ideas at search.gmane.org and perhaps find out why not to bother posting. And the Other: It's more a matter of working out how to point Google (or the search engine of your choice) at the archives in a useful way. In this case: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Apython-ideas%20site%3Amail.python.or... This is great information. Is there a page suggesting how to search archives effectively? Whilst much of that skill is generic, and clear concise explanation of what is expected from the polite user of the mailing list (and other Python mailing lists) could help. A link to that page could be put in the footer of the python mailing list emails.. and voila, a very easy thing to reference and get righteous about people not having read. What do you think? Christopher -- Be prepared to have your predictions come true
Christopher Reay wrote:
Is there a page suggesting how to search archives effectively? [...] What do you think?
I think that is an excellent idea for some person or persons to write up on their blogs or other websites. There's no need to wait for permission, or for The One True Official Page -- anyone can write up a page and link to it. There is even a python.org wiki, sadly under-utilized in my opinion. Anyone with an account who wants to start a page there can. Not every concept vaguely related to programming in Python falls under the responsibility of python.org. Teaching people how to search the Internet and interact with mailing lists without being annoying is not the job of the Python devs, but it's a good way for people to help out. -- Steven
On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 10:01 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
Teaching people how to search the Internet and interact with mailing lists without being annoying is not the job of the Python devs
Aren't they primarily Python devs who are annoyed and complain that people don't search properly? I don't think your proposal to just write somewhere on the Internet, but not on python.org helps. Even wiki.python.org doesn't help if people don't have a chance to read it before posting. The idea about giving a convenient search tool is pretty valid. The true problem is that *.python.org is unable to do anything (not even a search form here - http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas). For usenet there were auto announcements, for Google Groups and forums there are sticky threads with advices. -- anatoly t.
Im thinking something like: Python-ideas mailing list Python-ideas@python.org http://mail.python.org/**mailman/listinfo/python-ideas<http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas> How to Search the Archives: http://mail.python.org/dontReinventTheWheel Searching the archives is the *first* place you should go when exploring new ideas. They are full of (mostly!) excellent ideas, as well as showing how to explain your idea well, and helping you to not reinvent the wheel... or the tabloid. Please search for relevant keywords around your idea before posting to python-ideas. Thanks! As the footer of the emails. This is a small addition which provides some great meta information to "people with great ideas" and also allows a terse and simple response when a veteran detects a repeated idea. -- Be prepared to have your predictions come true
Christopher Reay wrote:
Im thinking something like: [...] How to Search the Archives: http://mail.python.org/dontReinventTheWheel Searching the archives is the *first* place you should go when exploring new ideas. ...
As the footer of the emails.
This is a small addition which provides some great meta information to "people with great ideas" and also allows a terse and simple response when a veteran detects a repeated idea.
More bloat for every single email which will be utterly ignored. Case in point: the mail digest for the python-dev mailing list already states: When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Python-Dev digest..." and similar for python-list, tutor, etc. And this message is at the *top* of the digest, not the bottom, and a mere two lines, not a big wall of text[1]. Yet there is still a steady stream of posts like these: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2012-June/015547.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-July/120910.html http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2012-July/090213.html Don't believe me? How often do you read the "This email is Confidential blah blah blah yadda watermelon blah" footers at the bottom of oh-so-many corporate emails? Everybody, sender and receiver, carries the cost of additional bloat in every email, and the people who most need the reminder that Python is twenty years old and this "brilliant idea" most likely has been thought of a dozen times before are the ones who are least likely to read instructions or pay any attention to them even if they do. [1] Standards of what counts as big blocks of text have been steadily falling since the Internet became popular. I'm just waiting for people to start replying to twitter posts with "TL;DR", at which point I intend to turn my computer off and move to a cave in the desert. -- Steven
Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> writes:
[1] Standards of what counts as big blocks of text have been steadily falling since the Internet became popular. I'm just waiting for people to start replying to twitter posts with "TL;DR", at which point I intend to turn my computer off and move to a cave in the desert.
I used to read “TL;DR”, but now I don't have the time to read five characters. -- \ “Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” —Edsger W. | `\ Dijkstra | _o__) | Ben Finney
participants (4)
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anatoly techtonik -
Ben Finney -
Christopher Reay -
Steven D'Aprano